The Case Against Hume (I)

The king, sensible that nothing kept alive the ideas of military valour and of ancient glory, so much as the traditional poetry of the people, which, assisted by the power of music, and the jollity of festivals, made deep impression on the minds of the youth, gathered together all the Welsh bards, and from a barbarous, though not absurd policy, ordered them to be put to death.--David Hume History of England

Edward I's mass murder of the socio-cultural leaders of the Welsh in 1284 is called 'barbarous,' but not absurd. It's not absurd because Hume recognizes the significance of what one might call a 'civic culture' -- poetry of the people...assisted by the power of music, and the jollity of festivals, -- for possible future (national) political resistance. That is to say, Hume recognizes the instrumental rationality of the English king's pacification of the Welsh which requires forceful methods to succeed. 

That despite finding Edward's policy intelligible from the perspective of (Machiavellian) statecraft, one might well naturally think that Hume also condemns Edward's mass murder, even cultural genocide because he calls it 'barbarous.' And it is certainly case that the sociological contrast between barbarous and civilization, which is an important empirical distinction in Hume, is also normatively laden. For Hume, to be civilized is to be normatively better, more advanced, than to be barbarous. So, the natural thought is not silly here.  I return to this below.

Yesterday, Mauricio Suárez called my attention to an article in The Scotsman, where academics protested the removal of David Hume's name from a university building at the University of Edinburgh. At first sight the critics are correct to suggest that Hume did not get honored belatedly by the university (which infamously refused him a post while living) in virtue of his racism, but for other “great and locally relevant [intellectual] achievements.” Let's stipulate this is true (although below I make an important qualification). It is also an  interesting and tough question (recall Neil McArthur -- himself a distinguished Hume Scholar - here)  how much imperfection one can tolerate in a scholar before certain academic honors for genuine intellectual achievements become off-limits. Jacob Levy (here; here) has done important work on this topic, which has influenced my own evolving sense. 

The critics' defense, as reported (which is an important caveat), of Hume involve at least five other claims: first, that his (acknowledged) racism toward "blacks [is] nonetheless marginal to his body of ideas." It is merely "one racist footnote." Second, that the university process was shoddy (“This is an area which requires sensitivity, tact, procedural transparency and patience.") Third, that the decision potentially negatively impacts the reputation of scholars who work on Hume ("suggests the university also regards these colleagues’ work as dubious or disreputable.”) Fourth, “Hume’s views on race...were common in his day." And, fifth, that the actions of the past are in a certain sense irrelevant today (“History contains many offensive things that cannot now be undone. What matters is how those living in the present conduct themselves towards one another.”)

Since I am a Hume scholar -- even got my first lucky intellectual break to write on Hume for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy --, you may expect me to be sympathetic to the critics and worry about my reputation. But, in fact, Hume scholarship has tried hard to confront Hume's racism (and I discuss some of this scholarship in my book on Smith). Anyway, my concern here is not with the reputation of Hume scholars, but with how to think about Hume's legacy.

I agree with the critics that the University of Edinburgh has done itself a disservice by it's unintellectual and uninformative explanation for its decision (here, so you can make up your own mind; ht Dailynous). But it does not mean the critics are right that there is no case here. As I have explained here, that infamous footnote occurs in a text which is also quite clearly anti-semitic. Hume's attitude toward the Jews (which sometimes could be more sympathetic) contrasts strongly with (say) Toland's advocacy of Jewish emancipation (a generation earlier).

In addition, Hume's views on the Irish (in his History) are not exactly sympathetic. I think (and will argue another time) that Adam Smith's one real fight with his close friend, Hume, involved Hume's prejudice toward the Irish (where Hume takes the side of the English, recycling its propaganda) in his treatment of the Irish (1641) rebellion. But today, I link you to Clare Moriarty's tweet which presents another's testimony. (Moriarty is a scholar of Berkeley's mathematics, who has called attention to his eugenic interests, anti-Irish prejudices, and slave-owning in the past.)

So, it is not true that in Hume's age, Hume's racial views were uncontroversial. Philosophers are endlessly taught, on the authority of both Hume (“that bigoted silly fellow")* and Kant, that James Beattie was a philosophical idiot. But whatever the merits of this claim against Beattie's arguments on causation, Beattie was also a fierce critic of Hume's racism (and may have even influenced Hume to moderate his racism).

So, the scholarly critics of the University of Edinburgh, rely on a flawed modern historicist defense of Hume which itself presupposes moral progress, where we know better and the mythical past was uniformly bigoted, as I have argued here (one of my better blog posts--go read it!) And while Hume was a critic of (ancient) slavery, his views on race were (predictably) used by contemporary defenders of slavery (recall here) and fiercely debated by English abolitionists.** 

So, the case against Hume is that his racism is not a minor aberration in his thought, but a significant element of his larger views. In my view this is so not because Hume was especially animated by cultural prejudice or racism, but rather because he was a proponent of civilization -- which he associated with being governed by rule of law, commerce, humanity, and progress -- and thought it okay, on balance, if civilization was spread, even by force. And this returns me to his comment on Edward I.+ For, while if we only look at the passage above, it might seem Hume condems Edward's brutal policy of pacification, Hume himself offers the following summing up a bit later in the History:

The enterprizes, finished by this prince, and the projects, which he formed and brought near to a conclusion, were more prudent, more regularly conducted, and more advantageous to the solid interests of his kingdom, than those which were undertaken in any reign either of his ancestors or his successors. He restored authority to the government, disordered by the weakness of his father; he maintained the laws against all the efforts of his turbulent barons; he fully annexed to his crown the principality of Wales; he took many wise and vigorous measures for reducing Scotland to a like condition; and though the equity of this latter enterprize may reasonably be questioned, the circumstances of the two kingdoms promised such certain success, and the advantage was so visible of uniting the whole island under one head, that those who give great indulgence to reasons of state in the measures of princes, will not be apt to regard this part of his conduct with much severity. But Edward, however exceptionable his character may appear on the head of justice, is the model of a politic and warlike king: He possessed industry, penetration, courage, vigilance, and enterprize: 

Here Hume quite clearly suggests that Edward I was the best king England ever had before or since ("any reign either of his ancestors or his successors").++ And one of the reasons for this is the very brutal annexation of Wales and the model it provided for the subduing of Scotland. And while Hume grants that from the vantage point of equity and justice Edward can be criticized, the consequences of this brutality are so excellent that the means justify the ends (the expansion of civilization). It is a very natural reading of Hume's History -- which was the source of his initial fame -- that brutal conquest in the name of reason of state is fine as long as you promote and secure the rule of law. This is a consequentialist argument.

Notice that Hume is not shy about judging characters of the past as exemplars worth emulating or not. Hume would reject the historicist argument of his defenders.

And while I have no doubt that British (racialized) imperialism in the name of civilization would have happened without Hume, Hume did help give this ideology (which goes back to earlier times [cf Petty's conquest of Ireland]) extremely wide currency and respectability (despite Adam Smith's and his student Millar's attempts to undo it). So, while this ideology does not influence the problem of induction, I do think it ties together many elements in Hume's moral and political philosophy and defense of commercial society. And I sometimes fear that despite Hume's scepticiam and irreligion (which made him ineligible for a university position), it is this proto-imperialist ideology that made Hume so widely and publically highly regarded (assuming most were uninterested in his metaphysics and the fine points of his epistemology). That's compatible with the claim that there are resources in his philosophy to combat this ideology.

Let me close. I do not think the case against Hume is simple or without complexity. And I do not wish to suggest that one cannot paint a better picture of Hume than I did today. (I have done so myself and will do so again.) But the case against Hume is wider and more relevant than his defenders realize. And ignoring that case means we do not confront the complicity of our heroes in justifying really important evils that ought to be repaired if we still can. 

 

 

*For a nice paper on Beattie's reception see Robin Mills.

**One interesting feature of Dark Side of the Light: Slavery and the French Enlightenment a fascinating polemic by Louis Sala-Molins is that it is unsparing of Condorcet (who was a critic of slavery) in part because Condorcet (whose stance anticipates Mill) could does not live up to the (imperfect) standards set by Las Casas (recall here) and 18th century 'English' abolitionism. The same, and worse, is true of Hume. 

Update: Hume's own involvement/complicity in then contemporary slavery/slave trade is discussed here.

+What follows is greatly indebted to  José A. Benardete sadly neglected, Greatness of Soul: In Hume, Aristotle and Hobbes, as Shadowed by Milton's Satan, a book I helped edit and see through press. Benardete is  not especially critical of Hume's admiration of Edward I.

++It is not entirely clear how to make this cohere with Hume's very high praise for Alfred I. 

Comments

[Olav Vassend]

So it seems that, at worst, Hume was prejudiced against some groups and defended certain morally atrocious acts on utilitarian grounds. If that's all it takes not to deserve having a building named after you, then I honestly doubt there's a single person in history or alive today who will meet the bar. In fact, my experience is that most of the historical figures who are venerated in the public sphere were deeply flawed in some way or other, usually much more so than Hume. Indeed, Hume was by all accounts a very morally upstanding person in most respects. Maybe the upshot is that we shouldn't honor anyone?

[Miles Rind]

This and the previous posts of yours to which you linked have been instructive to me. The passage from Beattie shows conclusively that Hume was not being just "a man of his time" in that now-notorious footnote, and the other considerations that you adduce present grave difficulties for the claim that what Hume says therein was peripheral to his thinking and of little influence.

[Eric Schliesser]

Thank you, Miles. I really appreciate that you took the time to read these other posts, too.

[Eric Schliesser]

Hi Olav (if I may?), thank you for your comment. People of good will can disagree in good faith about who to honor and why. So, I am not bothered by defenses of Hume Tower that are not mere propaganda (or recycling culture war tropes).
Yet, if it is right, as you claim, that "most of the historical figures who are venerated in the public sphere were deeply flawed in some way or other," perhaps (in light of your 'deeply') we should reflect a bit more critically on our culture's values and past and how we educate/teach about them?

[Robert A Gressis]

"Yet, if it is right, as you claim, that "most of the historical figures who are venerated in the public sphere were deeply flawed in some way or other," perhaps (in light of your 'deeply') we should reflect a bit more critically on our culture's values and past and how we educate/teach about them?"

Just our own culture's values?

I don't want to misrepresent you, so I'll give the following possibilities:

1. If you're a member of western culture (aka, WC), and every one, or almost every one, of the figures that WC honors is deeply flawed, then you should reflect more critically on WC's values and how you teach them. However, if you're not a member of WC, then it's not true that you should do this for WC, though it may or may not be true that you should do this for your own culture's values and how you teach them.

2. Every culture is such that all, or almost all, of the figures it honors are deeply flawed. Consequently, everyone who is formed by a culture and can reflect on its values should reflect on their own culture's values, especially if they are someone who teaches these values. That said, if you're a member of WC, then you should do this only for WC's values; similarly, if you're a member of Chinese culture (CC), then you should do this only for CC's values, etc.

3. Only WC is such a culture; consequently, though it's true that everyone who is a member of a culture that honors deeply flawed people should reflect on those people's values, the upshot is that only members of WC should do this.

4. Many cultures are like WC; but only the members of WC should reflect deeply on what the dishonorable fact says about them.

5. Everyone is required to reflect on the fact that the people of all cultures who are honored were often deeply flawed people. So, it's OK for me to reflect on deeply flawed, but honored, members of CC, etc.

Near as I can tell, you've only asserted 1. I'm curious about what you think of 2-4.

I should say, I'm writing this from a position of emotional upset. What happened with Hume and Edinburgh really bothers me, so if you want to dismiss me as a troll, you're well within your rights to do so. I'd like to think that I'm someone who is such that he can respond to reason, but you might disagree with that assessment, and such a dismissal might be justifiable.

If you're wondering, "why are you asking these questions? What are you really after?" I'll tell you, as best I can.

I would be surprised if western culture were unusual in the extent to which its honored figures are, by today's (western) standards, deeply flawed. For instance, I am of the view that Mao Zedong was deeply flawed (at best), and yet he's honored in China (if you're skeptical, here's some evidence that that's the case: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/29/why-maoism-still-resonates-china-today/). Consequently, I think many people in western culture are getting the wrong impression of how dishonorable their honored figures were.

So, that's the first issue. The second issue is that I think the standards we're using to justify stripping honors from honored figures are quite novel, and not widely shared. I fully cop to being in error about that. But it seems that people are saying this: "yes, we realize that lots of white people in the west chafe at the fact that prominent whites are being stripped of their honors. Well, so what? These people were evil people, and their evil was not incidental to their legacy, but central to it. This leads to the following principle: if we judge that someone is bad, such that his badness infects the rest of his work, then we should get rid of his honors, regardless of what the majority of people think."

You may object to my phrasing, but that's a quick-and-dirty way of phrasing how *I* see things. If this is right, why should this principle stop only at western borders? Shouldn't we tell the Chinese to stop honoring Mao? Or is there some cultural propriety issue here? And yet, I know that people would think that a westerner telling a Chinese that they should stop honoring Mao would be cultural imperialism. Why doesn't a similar charge register when it's a minority in a country doing the same thing to a majority within a country?

OK, venting over.

[John Quiggin]

That's fairly damning, Eric. Until now I only knew about the footnote, which seemed more like a failure to think deeply about a peripheral issue than a significant part of Hume's thought

As I expect you know, the case against Locke is even stronger https://jacobinmag.com/2019/03/john-locke-freedom-slavery-united-states

[Olav Vassend]

Hi Eric. Sure, even as a teenager it struck me as somewhat perverse that a lot of the people who are remembered (and commemorated) as great historical figures are basically people whose main claim to fame is that they led huge wars of aggression and killed tons of innocent people (Alexander the Great? Napoleon? And, by the way, Robert Gressis, the same can certainly be said for famous historical figures from outside the west, e.g. Shaka Zulu, who apparently even has an aquatic theme park named after him in South Africa). Seen in that light, of course, Hume's moral transgressions appear rather tame.

[Eric Schliesser]

Olav, we disagree that participation in the slave trade and promoting a kind of imperialism is tame from any light. But the question, at hand, is not what you and I think, but rather who to honor at a *university* and why or why not. As I said that is not an easy matter, but that question is made frivolous by comparing that choice to decisions about naming aquatic theme parks or national mythmaking.

[Olav Vassend]

Eric, I don't disagree that participating in the slave trade is bad in any light, but I didn't think Hume did that. "Promoting a kind of imperialism," on the other hand, does strike me as significantly tamer.

[Eric Schliesser]

Olav, check out this mentioned in my note: https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/david-hume-was-brilliant-philosopher-also-racist-involved-slavery-dr-felix-waldmann-2915908

[Olav Vassend]

Thanks for pointing that out to me, Eric.

[William Peden]

There are definitely multiple arguments against the ertswhile name. One is that it gives the impression that David Hume was honoured for his work by the University of Edinburgh in his lifetime, whereas actually he was excluded from academic employment despite his obvious genius and famously pleasant character, on grounds of religious heterodoxy.

The uncomfortable truth for the university is that, in retrospect, it was a backwater in terms of doing 18th century philosophy, rather than just training future greats. Aberdeen employed Thomas Reid, Glasgow employed Adam Smith and Francis Hutcheson, while Adam Ferguson and David Hume basically flourished outside academia. The only thinker that Edinburgh can really claim is Dugald Stewart, and I suspect that I'm not the only person to have studied a course in Scottish Enlightenment philosophy and yet be unable to name "The Top 5 Greatest Ideas of Dugald Stewart".

Renaming the David Hume Tower reminds people like me, who are proud graduates of the University of Edinburgh, that there is some smoke-and-mirrors in its reputation in philosophy.

[Stephen Menn]

I am tired of people talking about Hume's "infamous footnote" without talking about the Jamaican writer and teacher that Hume was insulting, without even giving him a name. He was Francis Williams, and he was an interesting person in his own right; he shouldn't be remembered just as the roadkill that Hume happened to run over. See, to start with, Vincent Carretta, "Who was Francis Williams?", Early American Literature 38 (2003), 213-237, easily findable on JStor, and including the chapter of Edward Long's History of Jamaica devoted to Williams, and thus also including a poem of Williams', in Latin elegiac couplets, celebrating the installation of a new governor of Jamaica, which unfortunately seems to be all we still have of Williams' writing. (Long was an obnoxious racist who cites the text in order to criticize or even ridicule it, but we wouldn't have the text if it weren't for him.) Justin Smith, when I was grousing about this to him the other day, pointed me to Williams: thank you Justin. Clearly some people know about Williams (there is a certain amount of literature on him by now); I don't know whether the Hume people have talked about him, figured out Hume's sources of information, etcetera.

[Stephen Menn]

I see that Popkin talks about Williams in "Hume's Racism Reconsidered"; but with mistakes about Williams (he says that he graduated from Cambridge), and much worse mistakes about Amo. Eric, do you know if Hume scholars have done more with Williams (rather than about whether Hume responded to Beattie) since then? Popkin just complains that Hume ignored being empirically refuted, but there is surely more to say than that. Popkin cites Gates as saying that Williams protested against Hume's insults: I don't know what the evidence is, but that would be interesting.

[Aaron V Garrett]

Silvia Sebastiani and I mention Williams and Philip Quaque in our piece, but in passing. I completely agree that there should be much more discussion of him (and others). I have been writing a piece on Phillis Wheatley who was famously and similarly dismissed by Jefferson.